In this episode of Guerrilla History, we get into part 2 of our 4 part miniseries on modern Chinese history featuring Ken Hammond (and guest host Breht O'Shea of Revolutionary Left Radio) with this absolutely terrific discussion on the Chinese Revolution & Civil War!  If you haven't already listened to part 1 of the series, on the Taiping and Boxer Rebellions, be sure to do so because we pick up right where we left off last time.  The next two installments will cover the Great Leap Forward and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and then the Reform period up to the present day, so be sure to not miss any of those upcoming episodes!

Ken Hammond is Professor of East Asian and Global History at New Mexico State University. He has been engaged in radical politics since his involvement in the anti-war movement at Kent State in 1968-70.  Ken is also the author of the book China’s Revolution & the Quest for a Socialist Future.

Shoeless in South Dakota: In this third edition of our All Too Human interview series, Breht and Dave welcome Niko into the Shoeless Shed to have an honest conversation about his struggles with alcoholism.  With these All Too Human interviews, we aim to highlight and destigmatize the mental health and addiction struggles of regular working class people in hopes that we can provide insight into this type of human suffering, help others who struggle with similar things feel less alone, and deepen our understanding of the modern human condition.

Outro music: 'Hundreds of Ways' by Conor Oberst 

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In this episode, Alyson and Breht wrestle with the possible rise of artificial general intelligence and its implications. Together they discuss the Silicon Valley Techno-Cult and their dark religious search for immortality, their hubristic attempts to "build god" and escape death, their neoliberal subjectivities and how that manifests in their work, how AI might manifest under the capitalist mode of production, the horrors and contradictions of "capitalism without workers", deflationary critiques of AI, humans as transitional creatures, consciousness and its complexities, intelligence without consciousness (philosophical zombies), Nietzchean nihilism, real religion and what it offers, embracing the inevitability of your own death, and much more!

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Shoeless in South Dakota: In this first edition of our All Too Human interview series, Breht and Dave welcome "Katie", Breht's sister, into the studio to have an honest conversation about her struggles with alcohol and gambling.  With these All Too Human interviews, we aim to highlight and destigmatize the mental health and addiction struggles of normal working people in hopes that we can provide insight into this type of human suffering, help others who struggle with similar things feel less alone, and deepen our understanding of the modern human condition.

Learn more about Shoeless in South Dakota: ShoelessInSouthDakota.com

Check out the Inaugural Episode of Shoeless HERE

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Musa Springer, Erica Caines, & Onyesonwu Chatoyer from Hood Communist join Breht O'Shea to discuss their participation in The Second International Meeting of Theoretical Publications of Left Parties and Movements in Havana, Cuba before discussing the history and current events playing out in Haiti. Together they converse about their time in Cuba, the various speeches they gave at the event, the ongoing embargo and its impacts, recent protests in Cuba, internationalism, the Zone of Peace campaign by the Black Alliance for Peace, US imperialism, the history of colonialism in Haiti, current events in Haiti, how Haiti is portrayed by Western corporate media, and much more!

Links:

• Hood Communist Blog
• Venceremos Brigade
• All-African People's Revolutionary Party (Florida)
• Liberation Through Reading
• Black Alliance for Peace (ATL)
• Join BAP
• Groundings Podcast

In this episode of Guerrilla History, we launch our 4 part miniseries on modern Chinese history featuring Ken Hammond (and guest host Breht O'Shea of Revolutionary Left Radio) with this terrific discussion on the Taiping and Boxer Rebellions!  Be sure to go back and listen to the previous episode we did with Ken in the fall, which serves as a bit of an introductory work for this miniseries. The other three installments will drop every other week (with other episodes in between), and will cover the Chinese Revolution/Civil War, the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, and the Reform period, so be sure to subscribe to not miss any of those coming episodes!

Ken Hammond is Professor of East Asian and Global History at New Mexico State University. He has been engaged in radical politics since his involvement in the anti-war movement at Kent State in 1968-70.  Ken is also the author of the book China’s Revolution & the Quest for a Socialist Future.

This is a small extract from a much larger patreon exclusive episode. To get access to the full episode, and over 300 other patreon exclusive episodes, join our patreon at: patreon.com/revleftradio

Listen to the first installment of this four-episode series HERE

Kenneth J. Hammond is Professor of History at New Mexico State University. Hammond was a student and Students for a Democratic Society leader at Kent State University from 1967 to 1970. He later (1985) completed his degree in Political Science, then studied Modern Chinese language at the Beijing Foreign Languages Normal School in Beijing. Hammond received an M.A. in Regional Studies - East Asia (1989), and a Ph.D in History and East Asian Languages (1994) from Harvard University. In 2007, Hammond was appointed director of the Confucius Institute, a cultural initiative funded in part by Hanban on the NMSU campus that is dedicated to studying and publicizing China and Chinese culture. He is the editor of the journal Ming Studies. 

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Black Red Guard returns to the show for a no-holds-barred, wide-ranging discussion on a multitude of topics, including Palestine, Aaron Bushnell, the DSA, line struggle, party building, Taiwan, revolution, the future, and much more!

Check out BRG's YT Channel HERE

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Check out his Twitch  HERE

Outro Music: To Cause Your Own Death by Mon Rovia

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Alyson and Breht explain and explore this famous text from Karl Marx, in the process they discuss French history, class conflict, the peasantry and lumpenproletariat, Bonapartism and Fascism, history, the role of the State under capitalism, and how all of this helps us to make sense of our contemporary moment of crisis in the US and around the world. 

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In this patreon exclusive, Breht reads and reflects on Buddhist writings including Thich Nhat Hanh's letter to MLK Jr. regarding Buddhist monks in Vietnam engaging in self-immolation and how it differs from suicide,  and a response by John Peacock to criticism by Slavoj Zizek of so-called Western Buddhism wherein he argues that mindfulness meditation is merely a way to cope with the depravities of capitalism; a new Opium of the Masses. 

Along the way, Breht takes many detours, and touches on the self-immolation and martyrdom of Aaron Bushnell, the ongoing multi-faceted evolution of the human species, and much more.  

Check out other Rev Left episodes on Buddhism and related topics, including the ones mentioned in this episode HERE